


Wanted

by lesbianophelia



Series: And Eventually His Lips [4]
Category: The Hunger Games
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, F/M, Therapy, growing back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 04:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2216142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianophelia/pseuds/lesbianophelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon Complaint. Set after “His arms are there to comfort me” but before “and eventually his lips.” </p><p>Centered around Peeta going through therapy and beginning to come to terms with his mother’s abuse. So … warnings for heavily referenced verbal and physical abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanted

“Is this where your … fixation … on Miss Everdeen began?” the therapist asks one day when he finishes talking about how Katniss’ parents were always touching. “Wait. No, we’ll go back to that. What do you remember about your own childhood?”   
  
“I don’t know,” he admits. “It doesn’t … there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense.”   
  
“Like what?” he asks. Peeta clams up, sometimes, about the jumbled memories, but the doctor says that it’s important to work on his  _perceived_ reality as well as what really happened. That they’ll figure it out along the way.  _We’ll figure it out along the way_. He says that a lot. Peeta, at some point in the Capitol, started taking it to mean that even this trained man had no idea what to do with him.   
  
“My mother was so  _cruel_. And my father … he just  _let_ her talk to me like I was … he never even tried to stop her.”   
  
“What would she say, Peeta?”   
  
He swallows hard. Shakes his head even though he knows that the motion won’t be seen through the phone. “I can’t. Not today. I’m sorry.”   
  
“That’s fine. We’ll come back to it. What else do you want to talk about today?”   
  
  
  
He can’t sleep that night. Not that it’s exactly a new thing. Katniss, on the other hand, is curled up against him, head pressed against his chest, and is sleeping soundly. At least for the moment. He drops his head back and stares up at the ceiling, hand tracing lazily up and down Katniss’ back.   
  
Now that he’s really thought about it, he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t jealous of Katniss’ relationships. With her father, before the mines exploded. With her sister, before the reaping. With her mother, after the games, if only because his house was empty and hers was full with her family.   
  
It’s just always been there, mingled, of course, with all the other things about her that he spent his time thinking about. Like, for instance, the way she smiled from her perch on her father’s shoulder when the two of them went to trade at the back door of the bakery. Or how her hair looked when she ran home after school and it bounced against her back.   
  
Her father is the part he was always the most jealous of. Followed closely by her mother, who loved Katniss’ father enough to leave her life at the Apothecary, because she wanted to marry the coal miner. And, presumably, they had Katniss because they wanted her, and not because they needed children to inherit the family business.   
  
Though, Peeta wasn’t ever brought about to have the bakery. His mother made no secret of the fact that she wanted a girl. And neither did his father, really. But the Mellarks had all sons, and his mother swore no more when Peeta was born a boy.   
  
When she wakes, he’s actually pretty close to drifting off. She gasps, sits up a little bit, and glances around the room.   
  
“Peeta?” she whispers. They made a deal to wake each other up. But he can never stand to do it.   
  
“Yeah, I’m here,” he says. “Bad one?”   
  
“The usual,” she answers. “You were in it.”   
  
He nods. Those are the worst ones. “Do you want to talk about it?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Okay,” he says. “You wanna go back to sleep?”   
  
She shrugs, laying her head back down on his chest. “What about you? Any nightmares?”   
  
“Haven’t slept,” he admits. She cranes her neck to look at the clock on his bedside table and her eyes widen.   
  
“Peeta! It’s almost two!”

“Oh, I know,” he says.   
  
“You were supposed to wake me.”   
  
“This is the best you’ve slept in ages,” he argues. “I’ll be all right, Katniss. Just try and get some rest.”   
  
  
  
“Are you ready to pick up where we left off last week?”   
  
“No,” Peeta answers honestly, hand clutching the phone a little bit  _too_ tightly. “But … um … I can try. I guess.”   
  
“You’ll stop if it gets to be too much?”   
  
“I will,” he answers. “I mean, clearly, I did last time. But, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, this past week – not like, an unhealthy amount. At least, I hope not an unhealthy amount.” He’s blabbering. “Um, she used to tell me I talked too much. And … other things like that. Um … one I really remember is …” He falters. “The bread. After I burnt the bread, she called me a  _stupid creature_. There were more, but they were pretty much the same. I was stupid. And worthless. And neither of them really hid the fact that I was supposed to be a girl.”   
  
The man on the other end of the line is being quiet. “And your father did nothing?”   
  
“He did nothing,” Peeta says. “At least, not that I can remember.” He can hear the doctor’s pen scratching across the paper faintly – a noise he remembers all too well from all the  _intensive therapy_ in the Capitol, after the war, when the two of them would spend hours talking, and then he’d be led off into another room to be tested. “I think I need to go, now,” Peeta says. “Katniss will be back soon.”  
  
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk more? You haven’t used much of your hour, Peeta.”   
  
He sighs. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just … need to make sure I have dinner ready, is all.”  
  
“Okay. And Peeta?”   
  
“Yes?”   
  
“She might be able to help better than I can, if there are pieces missing.”   
  
He knows that he’s right. But he also knows that Katniss’ parents were perfect, once upon a time. So much in love that her mother was willing to stop being a merchant and start being a coal miner’s wife for him. And that they  _wanted_ her. At least, as far as he could tell, they did.   
  
  
  
“You’re gonna have to talk about it eventually,” she says a few nights later, rolling onto her side and propping herself up on an elbow so that she can look at him. “Whatever it is looks like it’s eating you up.”   
  
It’s funny, the urge to pull away. To look up and off to the side, so that the tears won’t escape. They don’t usually try to be strong in front of each other. It’s never done them to much good.   
  
“Is it me?” she asks, insecurity creeping into her voice. “Did you have another episode?”   
  
He shakes his head. “No. Just … therapy. It’s getting hard.”   
  
“Oh,” she says. She’s quiet. She doesn’t believe him. “Well, if you want to talk about it –”   
  
“I’m  _mad_ at my parents,” he admits, whispering even though there’s no one else to hear him. “They’re dead, and I’m still mad at them, and I don’t even know if that’s allowed.”   
  
“We know so many dead people, Peeta. I think it would be weird if we  _weren’t_ mad at some of them,” she assures him, her free hand coming over to rub at his arm. “I’m mad at her, too.”   
  
“What do you … what do you know about her, Katniss?” he asks, struggling to keep the confusion out of his voice in case she reads him wrong. “Because I just keep thinking, and I’m not sure.”   
  
She swallows hard. It takes such a long time for her to speak that he doesn’t think he’ll get an answer. “Well, she hit you at least once. When you burnt the bread. You had a black eye in school that next day.”   
  
He nods. “What else?”   
  
“She was mean. Cruel, really. Um, she called you names. And when you were reaped … she told you that I was a fighter.”   
  
He swallows hard. “And my father?”   
  
“He was quiet,” she answers. “I never saw the two of you interact, much. He gave me cookies, the day of the reaping.”   
  
He remembers that. “But he didn’t stop her.”   
  
“He didn’t stop her,” Katniss says, paling a little bit. “Oh.”  
  
“Why didn’t he stop her?” Peeta asks, unable to keep the edge of hurt from sneaking into his voice.   
  
“I don’t know,” she admits. It the worst answer, and he knows that she avoids using it whenever possible, but sometimes she has no choice but to say it.  “I’m so sorry, Peeta.”   
  
He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “We’ve been talking about it in therapy. Trying to make sense of what I’m feeling.”   
  
“Yeah? Can I ask what he’s saying?”   
  
“Not much. But, I mean, there aren’t many people left who can tell me whether or not my parents wanted me. So …”   
  
“Peeta,” she whispers. Her pity should irritate him, but it spurs him on instead, because he’s close to tears either way, mood stabilizers be damned.   
  
“Why didn’t they  _want_ me, Katniss?”   
  
“I don’t know. And I don’t  _understand_ it, either. It’s so … it’s so unfair, someone like you being dealt such horrible parents. I hate it.”   
  
“Someone like me?” he asks hesitantly. But she does have a point. Anyone who has had to go through as much as him probably should have been read to as a kid or something. Maybe that would even him out a little bit.   
  
“Someone so brave, and kind, and smart,” she whispers. “Someone like you … Peeta, you deserved to have parents that wanted you as much as I do.”   
  
He can’t help the smile from creeping onto his face. “You want me?”   
  
She gives him a little smile. “Of course. I want you. And I want you to know how amazing you are. And I want you to know that this is the kind of thing that we can talk about – that we should talk about, probably.”   
  
“Yeah?” he asks.   
  
“Well, you know about my mother,” she says. “Apparently, I shouldn’t hold it against her. She was sick. Like me –”   
  
“Like us,” he corrects.   
  
“But … I was  _twelve_ ,” she whispers. “I was twelve. And starving. And it felt like she loved my father more than she loved me.”   
  
Her bottom lip is trembling. He wants to trace it, but there’s something too intimate about that, so he keeps his hands to himself, lying uselessly at his sides, the way they have been all night.   
  
“But, you know how that story ends,” she says, pulling herself together a little bit more. “With bread and dandelions.”   
  
He nods. “And mine …” he’s not sure how his ends. “My story ends –”   
  
“ _That_ story,” she corrects. “Your parents are not … they’re not your story. And your story isn’t over.”   
  
He can’t help the smile that eases its way onto his lips. “Fine. The story I was telling earlier,” he hesitates, but she doesn’t have a correction this time, so he pushes forward, “ends with me in my bed. With a girl who wants me. And thinks I’m  _amazing_.”   
  
She laughs a little bit, the sound surprising the both of them. Her hand actually comes up to her mouth, as if she can’t believe that she’s able to do that anymore, with everything that’s happened. He doesn’t blame her.   
  
“You are amazing,” she says. “I think it’s time to get some sleep, though. Or else you’ll regret this in the morning.”   
  
“No. I don’t think I could regret this,” he says. “But I am tired. Come a little closer, will you?”   
  
She nods and snuggles up against him. He sighs contently.   
  
  
“How are you doing today, Peeta?”   
  
“I’m okay,” he answers honestly. Katniss is waiting for him – or, well, she’s using his shower, but she’ll be waiting on the couch after that – but he promised not to hurry for her sake. “We talked. About my parents.”   
  
“Did that help?”   
  
“It did,” he says. “But … I have a few more questions.” 


End file.
